Tobacco Derived Poison Delivery Systems/Capitalism or Crime Against Humanity?

Tobacco Derived Poison Delivery Systems /Capitalism or Crime Against Humanity?

Tobacco derived poison delivery systems (TDPDS) are among the largest, if not the largest, cause of non-natural disease and premature death on the planet (with the possible exception of war and policy induced starvation). This fact is so well known that governments, such as here in Canada, require specific warning labels on every package of TDPDS that are marketed. They also require graphic pictures of diseased body parts. The government prints and posts signs in tobacco merchant's premises that state that one in every two people who smoke TDPDS will die as a result of that practice.

The current crisis in health care is due to an inordinate amount of patients requiring hospital care due to specific diseases directly related to TDPDS. Recently the doctor in charge of the major hospital in this city stated that TDPDS patients account for fifty percent of hospital operating costs.

The sale of TDPDS drain a significant portion of discretionary income from the middle to low income wage earners, reducing their buying power for other consumer goods and thus contributing to a lower quality lifestyle as well as to a lower quality life.

Is selling TDPDS to people until they die from it equatable to pulling gold teeth from people's heads and pushing them into a poison gas chamber?

 

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Re: Tobacco Derived Poison Delivery Systems /Capitalism or Crime Against Humanity?

Absolutely not, and it's offensive that you would try to equate the two.

The difference, of course, is that nobody forces you to smoke. Everyone knows the risks involved in smoking and it's up to individuals to make their own decisions about it. The tobacco companies don't force anyone to start smoking, despite what some anti-smoking lobbyists would like people to believe. People have the right to risk their lives doing stupid things if they want to.

 

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Most people who start smoking tobacco do so before the age of fifteen. Tobacco companies know this from their research and it is because of that knowledge that they specifically target advertising at young teenagers, example: Joe Camel. Are teenagers now considered to know what is best for them before they have any life experience that will give them the knowledge to make decisions about how they live the rest of their lives? When children start smoking tobacco they are in no way able to discern that TDPDS addiction is for life. Children learn from their society. If the children's role models, parents, movie actors and the like, are smoking and making it look cool, then the children will emulate them and become addicted long before they are able to make rational decisions concerning the rest of their lives.

During the second world war the Germans were believed to have killed six million Jews, Gypsies and other people they didn't like in their concentration camps. Since 1950, when the scientists proved that a single drop of nicotine extracted from a single cigarette was sufficient to kill a small mammal when given orally, TDPDS have killed more than a million people annually with the number increasing proportionately each year. That's more than fifty million people killed by tobacco companies in the last half century. The tobacco companies and the govenment know that tobacco products are addictive and deadly, yet they continue to market them because there is huge profit to be made off of poisoning people to death over a longer period.

Do you find it offensive that I would try to link the lesser crime of killing six million people to the crime of killing more than fifty million people? Or is your sense of outrage derived from a religious, cultural or political viewpoint?

 

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It's true that children aren't considered able to make responsible decisions in their lives - that's why a child's parents have a responsibility to look after them. There are many dangerous things that children and teenagers can do; drive too fast, go rock climbing, play with guns, binge drink, etc. The parents are the ones with the responsibility to ensure that children don't do anything stupid and dangerous.

This might have been a valid argument sixty years ago, but not anymore. I don’t know about Canada, but every public school student in the United States knows about the dangers of smoking. I attended public school for years and I can assure you that our teachers were constantly beating us over the head with information about smoking. In case you don’t attend school, or maybe just aren’t capable of paying attention there, we have constant radio and television commercials to warn you.

Again, this is the fault of society, not the tobacco companies.

And all of those people chose to smoke. Since presumably none of the Jews chose to go to concentration camps, you can’t equate the two. Smokers freely make a decision to engage in an inherently risky activity – this is not the same as being forced into a concentration camp.

Or maybe the government hasn’t outlawed tobacco because it believes that people have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies?

I find it offensive that you try to equate forcible killing with providing a product that people are free to choose, or no.

 

Nasor ...

Or maybe the government hasn’t outlawed tobacco because it
believes that people have the right to decide what to do with
their own bodies?

You have got to be kidding!

Hmmm ... No 'location' ... Alpha Centauri?
Certainly not the US of A!

Take care

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If the government allows the sale of a product that they know is going to kill at least half of the people who use it, by their own estimate, and seriously degrade the lives of the rest of the people who use it, then how can they be considered to be looking out for the best interests of their citizens? If the Nazi's were considered the worst mass murderers in history over a period of six year, then the tobacco companies will surely be regarded as the worst serial mass murderers that the world will ever know. The death toll from TDPDS since the second world war far exceeds all the people that died in the second world war, not just the people who were killed in concentration camps.

If the tobacco companies are allowed to continue to poison people to death with their TDPDS, then a couple of milion people a year are going to die each year in order to further enrich some already fabulously wealthy mass murderers. This cycle of death will continue until the production and sale of tobacco products are outlawed. If the government is actually looking out for the welfare of it's citizens, then why is the most addictive, carcinogin on the planet legal, and a non-addictive plant, marijuana, illegal?

The only answer can be... money.

If a person was to feed their spouse rat poison in their food so that the spouse got sick over a long period of time and then died, the person who did the poisoning would be charged with murder, if caught. That may seem like an improper analogy, but it actually is appropriate. The government says that TDPDS kills half the people who become addicted to them, yet they allow it to be sold in every convenience store, just the kind of places where kids frequent. If the governments knowingly participate in an activity that they know is going to kill innocent people, for the sole purpose of earning money, then they are not a real government, but simply a legal mafia.

 

I’ve said this several times, but you don’t appear to be listening, so I’ll say it again: tobacco companies aren’t murdering their customers because smokers freely chose to use their products. Surely you can see the difference?

 

I was a smart kid

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btw- I'm a 100% non smoker and think it's a stupid thing to do, but I think that tobacco should not be outlawed. It's a free choice and I place the freedom of people higher above all

 

If selling TDPDS, products that are known to kill the addicts, is a legitimate business, then why is marijuana, a product that is non-addictive, illegal?

If it is okay for tobacco companies to mass murder large segments of society with their TDPDS, simply because the young people who begin smoking do so because they want to, then why aren't you allowed to drive a vehicle without a seatbelt?

 

marijuana should be legalised

 

You aren't making an argument for the outlawing of tobacco here, you're making an argument for the legalization of marijuana.

Why do you keep calling the selling of tobacco products murder? The customers choose to use them and ultimately they - the customers - are responsible for their own lives. Are you really incapable of understanding the difference between forcing something on someone and giving someone the option to do something?

If I forcibly throw someone out of an airplane, it's murder. If I sell someone a parachute and that person later dies in a skydiving accident, I haven't committed murder because the dead person knew that skydiving was an inherently unsafe activity and freely chose to do it. See the difference?

 

If the government and the tobacco companies know before they market their product that it is going to kill half the people who use it and seriously degrade the life quality and expectancy of the rest, then they are as culpable as putting a loaded gun in the hands of a child and letting the child play in a playground with other children. More so, even, because they know that their TDPDS are certainly going to result in death while the child playing with a gun is only a probability. The government currently regulates many product that are dangerous to people's health. That's why there are such governmental departments as a Food and Drug Administration. Their job is to ensure that products harmful to humans are not allowed on the market.

That pretended concern for citizens translates into other governmental departments that regulate toys for children, cribs for babies, seatbelts in private vehicles for everyone and many other health and safety concerns that all together in a year would only ever account or a fraction of the deaths as do TDPDS in a year. The government has whole departments for enforcement of the rules of citizen safety, yet they are involved in the biggest mass murder scheme in history for the sole purpose of collecting enormous profit without investing anything. It is for this reason that they can be compared to a legal mafia.

When some one or some agency takes on the responsibility of regulating products for society based on their safety, it is incumbant on them to regulate all products and not exclude the one product that they happen to be making the most money at. If the people who manufacture and sell such a deadly product do so with the full knowledge beforehand that the product is going to result in the death of at least half the people who use it and seriously injure everyone else who uses it, then that is premeditation and, as such, is first degree murder.

 

Selling a product that is certain to kill people does not make one guilty of murder. Automotive companies know with absolute certainty that some percentage of their customers will be killed while using their product, but I don't think anyone would accuse the car companies of murder. The same goes for many other industries. Are the liquor companies responsible for all the people who are killed by alcoholism? Are the candy companies responsible for all the people who are killed by heart disease?

I enjoy skydiving. I know it's dangerous and that there's a significant chance I could die doing it, but I feel that being able to jump out of a plane in flight and experiences up to a minute of free fall is worth the risk. Do you believe the company that made my parachute will be guilty of murder if I die skydiving? After all, they must have known that a certain percentage of their customers would be killed because of their product.

 

There is a certain degree of risk with doing anything. If you are walking on a sidewalk and trip and fall and break your arm, should the maker of the sidewalk be liable? I think not. Is that the kind of risk you associate with driving a car? Of course it is. Where you seem to have trouble distinguishing between risk of accident and liability is the presence of foreknowledge. In risk of accident the possiblity of someone being injured by a product is based on how that person handles the product. In liability the foreknowledge must have been present that the makers of the product knew with certainty, as opposd to probability, that people would be injured or killed by the product. A recent example of this product liability is the Firestone Tire company which recently ceased to exist, after a century of operation, because of the faulty product it knowingly put on the market. The tobacco companies are killing millions of people a year, not hundreds like Firestone, but they are so wealthy and influential and interconnected with government that they buy their way out of whatever trouble they incur. They are so wealthy that even the multi-billion dollar settlement against them, which they merely passed on to consumers by raising their prices by a few cents, has no effect on their operating strategy.

 

In order for a company to be held legally liable for damages or injuries caused by a product their product must 'have a propensity or tendency for causing physical harm beyond that which would be contemplated by the ordinary user.'

In other words, you can't be held legally liable for a dangerous product if people know that it's dangerous when they purchase it. Since virtually all smokers are aware of the dangers of smoking, tobacco companies aren't liable. That's the legal definition of product liability in the United States, any way.

 

It is unfortunate that the tobacco companies can win so often in court. They can easily afford to spend a billion dollar a year on lawyers without it negatively affecting their business. The problem I find with the ordinary user knowing the dangers of TDPDS is that most people start smoking when they are 13, 14, 15 or 16 and they certainly don't know anything about life at that age, no matter how many times they are told it's bad. They become addicted for life before they are of an age to legally drink or drive.

 

Again, it's true that children aren't considered able to make responsible decisions in their lives - that's why a child's parents have a responsibility to look after them. There are many dangerous things that children and teenagers can do; drive too fast, go rock climbing, play with guns, binge drink, etc. The parents are the ones with the responsibility to ensure that children don't do anything stupid and dangerous.

 

So now it's the tobacco companies position that parents must spend 24 hour every day with their teenagers?

Are you serious?

 

No, I’m saying that the burden of ensuring that a child doesn’t smoke lies with his or her parents. This is a basic, well-established principle of law in the United States. It’s also common sense.

 

So what you are saying is, that it is alright for tobacco companies to premeditate the murder of millions of people every year for profit because parents should have somehow stopped the teenagers from smoking and getting addicted to TDPDS in the first place? Is that "common sense" as viewed from the perspective of the tobacco industry?

Or is referring to purposely poisoning everyone they sell their TDPDS to as 'premeditated murder' an unfair classification of what it is that they are doing?

How does the fact that Firestone is liable for contributing to the cause of the death of hundreds of people not equate to the tobacco companies contributing to the cause of death of millions of people?